Lucasfilm(NEW YORK) — May 4th is Star Wars Day, so fittingly, ABC Radio caught up with Oscar-winning director Ron Howard to talk about his latest project, Solo: A Star Wars Story. Howard also unveiled a new lookat the film on ABC’s Good Morning America.

Howard’s been friendly with Star Wars creator George Lucas since Lucas directed Howard in the hit 1973 movie American Graffiti, so he’s always had a peek “behind the curtain” of the Star Wars films. He tells ABC Radio that it was during downtime on the set of Graffiti that Lucas’ galaxy far, far away initially took shape.

Howard admits with a laugh that he thought Lucas’ idea of a “sort of, kinda” homage to Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon “was a terrible idea…because at that time, sci-fi was, you know…a B movie genre.”

Howard took over the director’s chair on Solo from LEGO Movie directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord, who parted ways with Lucasfilm over creative differences. That left Howard with the difficult job of jumping onto a big budget project that was already in motion. So why’d he do it?”

“I loved the cast,” he tells ABC Radio. “There was so much good work that that had already been done and yes a lot of work to do. And yes, some rethinking of previous scenes that have been shot, sure. But I wouldn’t have signed on without a great deal of enthusiasm and belief — and that’s what I wanted to share with everybody.”

Howard said the end result was “a fantastic creative experience for me.”

Solo: A Star Wars Story, starringAlden Erenreich as young Han Solo and Donald Glover as young Lando Calrissian, opens May 25.